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BrainPop Jr.: Thanksgiving

What it is: BrainPop is usually a paid service. This week, BrainPop Jr. is offering their Thanksgiving with Annie and Mobi for free. The video teaches students about the first Thanksgiving and includes plenty of facts about the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and the famous harvest feast. The video includes several discussion and dig-deeper questions throughout. The questions appear on a notebook next to the video. You can pause the video when the questions appear for a class discussion or for independent reflection in a journal. You can print out an accompanying notebook page that lists all of the questions from the video. At the end of the video, you can choose to “learn more” about the first Thanksgiving with additional activities, crafts, games, suggested reading, drawing, writing, interactive word wall, and quizzes.
How to integrate BrainPop Jr.: Thanksgiving into the classroom: The BrainPop Jr. Thanksgiving video is a fun way to teach about the history of Thanksgiving to younger students. The video is about 4 minutes long and includes multiple opportunities for discussion and check points for understanding. There are also additional follow up activities. Some of the activities are for print (a Thanksgiving “what I’m thankful for” turkey), and some are to be completed on the computer. Watch the video as a class with an interactive whiteboard or projector. Set up your classroom computer with the “learn more” activities for students to complete as a center activity. Alternatively, students could watch and complete the activities independently in the computer lab setting. The interactive word wall is a great way for students to learn some of the vocabulary associated with Thanksgiving.
Tips: Print out the Thanksgiving Notebook for your students to fill out as they watch the video. Thank you to @mrscoggin for sharing this freebie on Twitter!
Leave a comment and share how you are using BrainPop Jr.: Thanksgiving in your classroom.

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I’ve long been a fan of Bloom’s Taxonomy…not necessarily for all the ways it has been pushed into different fads throughout the years, but instead for the way that it helps me (and my students) think about the learning process. It helps me approach the learning process in a more holistic way, ensuring that I don’t camp out in one way of thinking and evidencing learning for too long. I think it is human nature to get excited about one way of thinking and suddenly everything we do falls into that. It can be a little bit like the new car that you purchased, you begin to see that car everywhere because you have a new awareness of it. I’ve noticed myself doing the same in teaching. Bloom’s Taxonomy helps me to keep myself cognizant of all the different ways to approach learning.

A few years ago, I created some different versions of Bloom’s Taxonomy for my students. I wanted them to really think about all the different ways that they can approach learning. Learning isn’t just memorization. It isn’t just reading and understanding. Most traditional schooling has them believing that this is all there is to learning. One of my goals over the past year is to help students understand that learning is life. It is a part of everything we do. There is something to be learned in every situation and from everyone we encounter. There are different ways to learn that give us a larger understanding and help us to make connections. That is exciting!

You will notice that my images don’t have the traditional Bloom’s pyramid. That is intentional. Each of these ways of thinking is important in its own right. I have used these with students so that they have an awareness of the different ways of learning, but also so that they can see what options are available to them when they are demonstrating learning. Powerful things happen when students can make decisions about how they choose to learn. Challenge them to enter into learning in different ways. A new approach to the same question can bring about amazing new insights.

Are you looking for the full-size poster version of these images? You can find them here, best of all you will be helping me make personalized education a reality for EVERY child. The poster options are along the right side of the page. My favorite is still the Peacock

Are you wondering how you can help me make the Learning Genome Project a reality? Tweet, blog, send it as a story tip to news organizations, donate, send it to family/friends/colleagues/acquaintances. Buy the Bloom’s images above in the Poster version. Thank you for all of your help and support!

Comments (5)

tara francissaid on 19-10-2012

Thanks for sharing these. I’m also a great fan of bloom’s and use it with 1st grade to help structure assessment tasks.

Jazmin Msaid on 20-10-2012

Dear Kelley,
Hi my name is Jazmin, I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I commented on your post for Construct #2 last month. I really like the approach you are using in your classroom for the Bloom’s Taxonomy. Even better how you created posters for a classroom setting to share with everyone. Students should be able to see they have options when it comes to learning, and that everything does not revolve around standards. I feel this is what you did when you listed under each of the learning categories. I would like to use this approach, and hope I can buy these posters later on in the future. Thank you for taking the time to read my comment and if you would like you can visit my blog.

Teaching online is a great experience and people who are using an online teaching platforms like WizIQ are teaching beyond any geographical boundaries. These online teaching platform enables student to get register in the class of any teacher of their choice. Teacher can also teach them in a interactive manner using audio-video communication, sharing any file, text chat with students, whiteboards tools to draw anything, creating any courseware, conducting online tests and many more applications.

This is appropriate. The taxonomies needs to respond to the emerging needs. As we embrace technology, environmental, inclusions and gender issues we need to re look the taxonomies to respond to the needs. Appropriate placement will bring out more relevancy.